Baliyatra is largest trade fare in Odisha with more than 15000 shops and stalls, open for public for 10 days from the start of Kartik Purnima, in Cuttack, Odisha
In such occasion the children of small traders who come from various parts of the country to Balijatra Festival for business purpose, move here & there & spend their time playing in sand. The traders come basically from Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim and Uttarakhand etc.
NIC-District Centre, Cuttack in collaboration with District Administration and Sarba Sikshya Abhiyan (SSA), Cuttack thought of an innovative plan to organize Computer Awareness-cum-Training Programme for deprived children.
The objective of the programme was to bring IT exposure to deprived children and sow seeds of dream and aspiration in them. Venue was the Temporary School opened by District Administration and SSA in the Baliyatra Ground.
On an average, 30 to 40 children participated in the programme daily. Out of them a very few are school going children,as most of them are either illiterate or school drop-outs.
The sessions were facilitated by Smt. Mamata Khamari, DIO & Ms. Itishree Nanda, DIA, NIC-District Centre, Cuttack, Ms. Hiramani Mohanty, Programmer, SSA, Cuttack and Shri Bibekanada Kanungo, CP, DRDA, Cuttack.
For children, this was a unique experience of their life. They were not ready to leave this classroom where they learnt various educational games, paint etc.
The loving bond between the facilitators & children was so profound that children started crying once the fair got over and as they were going to miss this class room and their loving mentors.
While the food being supplied was giving them “Physical nutrition”, IT education gave them food for “Intellectual Nutrition”, the Love & affection they shared gave them “Emotional Nutrition”.
